Ze is a 17-year-old shaman that is about to graduate high-school with top marks. Burdened by the ideas of who he should be, he finds an opportunity to focus on the present moment when he meets 16-year-old Maralaa. Thanks to her he discovers himself emotionally and physically.

Film expert recommends

The feature-length debut of a young director, who has previously made two short films and now lives in Portugal, the country that, along with France and Qatar, helped finance this work. By the way – last year’s Mongolian candidate for an Academy Award. The artistic and economic potential of this cinema is usually evidenced by works made in co-production, such as – Tuya ‘ s Marriage (2006), filmed with China in Inner Mongolia, or the documentary Hunting with Eagles (2016), made with the participation of the United States. Here it is no different, but the result has no trace of an orientalising perspective. It is the astonishing and at the same time ordinary story of a seventeen-year-old (!) shaman from the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar. It is surprising that at such a young age one can already be a spiritual oracle for others, but not surprising in turn for the protagonist’s most ordinary dreams and problems: school, peers, first feelings, in a word nothing metaphysical. The director moves seamlessly from one plane of the film to the other, showing narrative flair and empathy, while sticking to the limits of realism. Without didacticism or melodrama, she offers an expedition into a world that is distant and paradoxically close to teenagers.

Jacek Nowakowski